Most newspapers cover the Conservative plans to scrap the complex system of targets with which Gordon Brown has attempted to micromanage the NHS. In place of centralised targets, doctors would be given their own budgets and would be rewarded for the individual health outcomes of their individual patients. The Times gives the example of breast cancer. Conservatives believe that better care would be delivered "if the NHS abandoned its target of a two-month waiting time to first treatment and concentrated on improving the five-year survival rate."

"We’ve reached the absurd situation where waiting time targets are being turned into a minimum wait so you’ve got local NHS bodies telling the hospitals that they can’t treat patients before, say, 20 weeks because they can’t afford to pay for it and because the waiting time target says they should be seen at 20 weeks."

Recent opinion polls have suggested that the Tories are now most trusted to run the NHS – Labour’s traditional number one area of policy. David Cameron put the NHS at the heart of the Tory agenda in his party conference speech – pledging to put it at the front of the queue when it comes to public spending priorities.